This review could be very brief: buy these two discs! [The Elias Quartet] are simply astounding, in the freshness, intensity, assurance and seeming spontaneity of their playing…[Bitlloch] cultivates a persistent restrained portamento which…makes her stand out from her colleagues in a way that sheds new light on several of these amazing works

The articulation is crisp and neat, the textures refined and transparent. But there’s a lot more going on, too…An unmistakeable fantasy is at work here; the subtlety and affection of the group’s playing (and the finale is quite irresistibly springy) is coupled to rhythmic drive and a questing collective imagination.

This live recording, the fourth in the Elias’s Beethoven cycle, starts well and gets better. No 2 may be the least of the Op 18s, but they dispatch it with spirit...As for the grand, richly expressive Op 59, I can’t imagine it better done.

this terrific cycle from the Elias String Quartet demonstrates how fresh, probing and confrontational a new account can be...Volume 4 covers early, middle and late-period Beethoven and the Elias distil the special energy of each... It’s exciting playing, and a reminder of how the Elias players put every bit of themselves into their performances.

This is becoming a beautifully thought out Beethoven cycle; something rather special.